Over the last few weeks we’ve been hearing about the Gigafactory 1 being a bottleneck for the production of Model 3 vehicles; what wasn’t known was how much of a bottleneck issue Tesla had. Well, now we do, and it’s not looking good. According to the company's Q3 report, it has only managed to build 260 Model 3 vehicles, well below the 1,500 that had been planned by September.
Aside from the very low number of vehicles produced, the company also set a new record with regards to losses. In Q3, ending September 30th, the car maker lost $619 million, almost double the $336 million it lost in the second quarter. During Q3 2016, the firm was reporting a profit of $21.9 million.
In the past few days, the CEO of Tesla’s battery partner at the Gigafactory, Panasonic, announced that batteries were indeed behind the hold up and that output could be increased soon. One of the ‘fixes’ that it looks like Panasonic and Tesla have deployed was to lay-off up to 700 workers at the plant; according to Motor Authority, Musk told analysts at a conference call that the company would “be adding robots at the choke points” on the production line.
Despite all these efforts, Tesla has stated that it will not be able to build the Model 3 at the intended rate of 5,000 per week by December, as was previously anticipated in July; it now plans to reach that goal in early 2018. At the time of writing, the company had seen a drop of 6.8% in its share price.
Source: Motor Authority
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